Power Manager Program imploded

I use two Thinkpads and, until a few days ago, I loved working on both of them. The first is a T60, XP Professional; the second, a non-tablet X61, Vista. For some reason, the Thinkpad Power Manager simply stopped functioning properly on both machines a few days ago; I'll describe the T60 first as that is my work priority.

I recently updated using System Update, and the only update performed was Rescue and Recovery v4. Soon afterwards, upon restarting my computer, I notice the green power gauge for Power Manager is absent. Interesting... so I simply go to my start menu and click on the icon manually. Nothing. Again. Nothing. I tap FN+F3 (the battery/power hotkey command)... and nothing. I hit CNTL+ALT+DEL and I see three AcFnf5.exe services running alongside three rundll32.exe services. I end each service one by one and after a few cancellations, the menu for the Power Manager appears. I ensure that the "show gauge on task bar" box is checked. For good measure, I uncheck it; repeat these steps; and recheck it; and, after a restart, still no show.

I next perform a litany of troubleshooting steps. I uninstall and reinstall practically every other Thinkpad program I have that came in Lenovo's bloatware folder. Still no go. I defragment the disk; nothing. I check for disk errors; nothing. I uninstall and reinstall Power Manager including its drivers. Here is where it gets interesting: both System Update and the standalone program file hang when trying to reinstall the program. I eventually have to reboot or close the program forcefully. But when I open the start menu, I see the program has installed into its folder... and the process repeats itself. Reboot, no gauge; click, no gauge; CNTRL-ALT-DEL, shut down the acfnf5.exe service, it shows up.

So I do some research and begin to wonder: why would ending the ACfnf5.exe service "cause" the Power Manager window to show up, especially since that service governs the FN+F5 Access Connections window?? Now, whenever I press FN+F5 the window for Access Connection shows but it hangs at the splash screen. And when I try to use Thinkpad Productivity Center, the menu flashes for a second, ever so briefly, then refuses to show in all of its white and black and red glory!

At this point, I have practically no Lenovo bloatware programs left. Access Connections is obliterated in the uninstall heap, so is Power Manager, Rescue/Recovery, Maintenance Manager, etc. All I really wanted was Power Manager, with its nifty function to set battery thresholds and the customizable power profiles. (and maybe RR... must reinstall that later today.) Can anbody tell me why Power Manager imploded and refuses to play nice now?

On a final note: the instinctive question I raised to myself--software conflict with existing program?--was not fruitful. The SAME Power Manager disappearing gauge bar-cum-Lenovo programs crashing problem happened to my X61 using a different OS, different third-party anti-virus/anti-spyware/firewall, and no other running programs that executed at startup--it was a barebones business machine built for speed. With that, I just figured restoring everything from the RR partition was easier. And it was; took a few hours but I had virtually no data on that thing. This T60 problem is bigger since it is a primary business terminal machine and is loaded with costly programs and data.

 

I had exactly the same problem yesterday on my Thinkpad R61i running win xp pro and as this was the only reference I could find online about it I thought I would post. Similarly, my power manager suddenly stopped working at all - when I tried to run it my taskbar and desktop stopped working and though restarting explorer.exe got them back the whole system then crashed a couple of times later. Investigated the services and was similarly puzzled by the startup of acfnf5.exe. Tried disabling and enabling a few of the thinkpad bloatware services, couldn't find anything. But then I reinstalled the power manager after downloading it from the lenovo website and after a restart it worked fine. No idea what the problem is but from now on I will try and keep a freeware battery manager ready to install in case it happens again when I'm not online.